I was planespotting at O'Hare on July 30th around 1:30p.m., and happened to catch this plane coming through...

The tail number is N973AS, and a search on the internet revealed that it is an Alaska Airlines MD-83, built in 1994. FlightAware did not have this arrival listed, so I couldn't find out who was operating that flight and where it came from.

So, what I'm wondering is, why is the plane painted all white with no titles? It's pictured on a.net fully painted in the AS scheme in previous years. Does anyone have any information on the aircraft, or the flight it was operating? I'm very curious

Quoting Maestra80 (Reply 11):So, I take it DOJ stands for Department of Justice (that's who it belongs to?), and that the plane was carrying jailbirds? That's funny, I didn't know they do that. Is this common?

Quoting Maestra80 (Reply 14):I just wonder what they were doing with the prisoners they were bringing into O'Hare? Like, what is the purpose for that flying them around on planes? I thought they transferred prisoners on buses.

Quoting Lexy (Reply 16):Quoting Maestra80 (Reply 14):
I just wonder what they were doing with the prisoners they were bringing into O'Hare? Like, what is the purpose for that flying them around on planes? I thought they transferred prisoners on buses.

You can freely track most DOJ flights as long as they are not flying with DOJ "Justice" callsign as these are considered government flights which for obvious reasons are untrackable but if you search the registration you will find them, they usually are flying from KIWA or somewhere around Texas, they mostly do ALIEN transport down to central america with the deported people.

Yes, I dispatched this flight along with several others the other day. These flights are JPATS, and they are based of OKC, AEX, and AZA. They go to TUL and VQQ for mx all the time. Since the flight operate under Part 91, we don't provide full releases, but rather generate flight plans. These flights are filed under their registration numbers.

The following are JPATS aircraft. RD owns all these aircraft, but they are not on our ops specs.

MD80's
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N932RD
N950AS
N964AS
N965AS
N973AS
N974AS
N976AS

B734
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N765TA

*N764TA used to be part of the fleet, but the aircraft was recently sold to Olympic Airways

Dispatchers...saving pilots from themselves and their egos since 1938!

Not all of these planes will fly prisoners, they will fly high profile informants into a city that has gone into the witness protection plan being brought back to a court appearance if they cannot make commercial service in a timely matter or some circumstances requires them to go get them,
.
These planes also are not just for illegals, but lets say someone has committed a crime say in new york or Washington and they are captured in California or Arizona, these planes run
on a semi schedule dropping in scooping up prisoners and dropping them off at other cities.
.
Yes some travel by bus but primarily on short routes. and there was an instance here where they were moving 4 prisoners in cargo vans, They are handcuffed to the floor in a small caged area of a van and the engine conked out and the engine caught on fire with only the
jail driver and guard escaping.
.
The doj has had 727,s and 737,s even the cia has a 737 closely resembling Air con.
As a norm most of these aircraft fly at night out of the traveling public's eye. Hollywood has made the layouts on these planes like a flying prison. The doj does have many of these planes that are just in commercial config for flying agents etc around the country. There was a time where prisoners were flown commercial airlines usually pre boarded from the ramp and onboard when pax came on board but i have not seen any since 911 but that doesnt mean they still do not do it. I have heard of one branch of government has a couple of planes that are in a current airlines livery and mechanics have spotted the plane and the
N reg number but the ship is registed to them but never in their fleet.?. They call them Ghost ships as they have no record of them and they have never seen or heard of one in for repair, which leads me to wonder if there are more of these ghost shops out there with other airlines.

I totally forgot about searching on FlightAware by tail number. Good idea! Although this particular flight I saw was unlisted.

Quoting Deltabobo (Reply 21):The following are JPATS aircraft. RD owns all these aircraft, but they are not on our ops specs.

So does that mean that Ryan International pilots fly these planes for JPATS, or does JPATS have their own pilots?

Quoting JetJeanes (Reply 22):There was a time where prisoners were flown commercial airlines usually pre boarded from the ramp and onboard when pax came on board but i have not seen any since 911 but that doesnt mean they still do not do it.

Yikes, I wouldn't want to ride on a plane with a prisoner! But I guess I would rather fly on a plane with one prisoner, than a plane full of prisoners.